Decolonizing knowledge in the postdigital era: Pedagogical strategies for navigating AI-driven epistemic transformations
Article / Journal
Author(s) / editor(s):
Monika Popow
Year: 2026
Language(s): English
Abstract:
The postdigital era signals a profound ontological rupture in knowledge governance, reshaping the foundations of epistemic authority, intellectual agency, and pedagogical ethics. AI is not a neutral tool but an active agent in automating exclusions across epistemic domains—the systems through which knowledge is produced, legitimized, and accessed. In discussing AI-driven epistemic transformations, the very nature of what we mean by epistemic is called into question. By bringing decolonial and postdigital perspectives into dialogue, this study interrogates how AI-driven infrastructures perpetuate and reconfigure colonial and neoliberal logics. Drawing on Floridi’s philosophy of information, Hayles’ posthumanist critique of cognition, and Stiegler’s theory of technics, it examines how algorithmic governance, predictive analytics, and generative AI (GenAI) transform the conditions of education. Rather than merely embedding objectivity, these systems reinforce technocratic norms while marginalizing non-Western and Indigenous knowledges. As machine-learning technologies increasingly shape educational environments, they call for urgent reconsideration of justice and relational knowledge-making. In response, the paper proposes pedagogical frameworks that resist commodification and standardization, advancing pluralism, historical consciousness, and democratic participation. Education must not passively accommodate AI’s epistemic architecture but instead reclaim its transformative, deliberative role—challenging algorithmic enclosures and cultivating an inclusive, reflexive postdigital knowledge society.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2025.2552764
Post created by: Virginia Signorini